Experimental Bach: Fugue in C major for violin and voice

Latvian violinist Laura Zarina has taken Bach’s famous Fugue in C major and transformed it into a duet for violin and voice. 

Inspired by the scientific approach of Dr. Helga Thoene is her book Johann Sebastian Bach: Ciaccona: Tanz oder Tombeau? where Thoene argues that Bach’s compositions for solo violin are a ’multi-layered enigma’ encoded with text from the Latin litergy, Zarina has experimented with the hidden chorales within this fugue, singing the lines herself. 

’I had heard this way of performing Bach’s solo works years ago and I was fascinated by the dimension offering new perspective on these works, giving both logical and also spiritual clearness’. Zarina explains. ’I had a great curiosity about the impacts of how the human voice of an instrumentalist influences the way of instrumentalist’s playing.’

’Usually in the process of making music, musicians aim to imitate a singing line, usually without daring to sing by themselves and having not the smallest understanding about the skill. In order to get closer to that by myself, I took singing lessons, so I could build my technical base, which enabled me to sing long lines in all female voice registers’.

Zarina has performed with the Canadian Opera Company, the National Latvian Symphony Orchestra and the National Latvian Opera Orchestra, as well as winning multiple awards. As a musician Zarina states on her website that she ’always deals with different music periods and instrumentation,’ with the aim of ’achieving a synthesis of sense and sensibility, bringing to light what is hidden in the works of music.’